ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5695-117X
Current Organisations
University of Helsinki
,
Karolinska Institutet
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 31-07-2019
DOI: 10.1017/THG.2019.35
Abstract: The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze in idual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m 2 ) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided in idual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin in iduals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large s le sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-07-2018
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 10-2017
DOI: 10.1017/THG.2017.49
Abstract: Whether monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins differ from each other in a variety of phenotypes is important for genetic twin modeling and for inferences made from twin studies in general. We analyzed whether there were differences in in idual, maternal and paternal education between MZ and DZ twins in a large pooled dataset. Information was gathered on in idual education for 218,362 adult twins from 27 twin cohorts (53% females 39% MZ twins), and on maternal and paternal education for 147,315 and 143,056 twins respectively, from 28 twin cohorts (52% females 38% MZ twins). Together, we had information on in idual or parental education from 42 twin cohorts representing 19 countries. The original education classifications were transformed to education years and analyzed using linear regression models. Overall, MZ males had 0.26 (95% CI [0.21, 0.31]) years and MZ females 0.17 (95% CI [0.12, 0.21]) years longer education than DZ twins. The zygosity difference became smaller in more recent birth cohorts for both males and females. Parental education was somewhat longer for fathers of DZ twins in cohorts born in 1990–1999 (0.16 years, 95% CI [0.08, 0.25]) and 2000 or later (0.11 years, 95% CI [0.00, 0.22]), compared with fathers of MZ twins. The results show that the years of both in idual and parental education are largely similar in MZ and DZ twins. We suggest that the socio-economic differences between MZ and DZ twins are so small that inferences based upon genetic modeling of twin data are not affected.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 10-04-2014
DOI: 10.3390/GENES5020330
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 21-06-2013
Abstract: Many genomic elements in humans are associated with behavior, including educational attainment. In a genome-wide association study including more than 100,000 s les, Rietveld et al. (p. 1467 , published online 30 May see the Perspective by Flint and Munafò ) looked for genes related to educational attainment in Caucasians. Small genetic effects at three loci appeared to impact educational attainment.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 12-07-2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-02-2016
DOI: 10.1111/ADD.13303
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-01-2019
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-07-2014
DOI: 10.1002/AJMG.B.32254
Abstract: The American Psychiatric Association estimates that 3 to 7 per cent of all school aged children are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Even after correcting for general cognitive ability, numerous studies report a negative association between ADHD and educational achievement. With polygenic scores we examined whether genetic variants that have a positive influence on educational attainment have a protective effect against ADHD. The effect sizes from a large GWA meta-analysis of educational attainment in adults were used to calculate polygenic scores in an independent s le of 12-year-old children from the Netherlands Twin Register. Linear mixed models showed that the polygenic scores significantly predicted educational achievement, school performance, ADHD symptoms and attention problems in children. These results confirm the genetic overlap between ADHD and educational achievement, indicating that one way to gain insight into genetic variants responsible for variation in ADHD is to include data on educational achievement, which are available at a larger scale.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 31-10-2016
Abstract: In iduals with more education tend to live longer. Genetic variants have been discovered that predict educational attainment. We tested whether a “polygenic score” based on these genetic variants could make predictions about people’s lifespan. We used data from three cohort studies (including ,000 participants) to examine the link between offspring polygenic score for education and parental longevity. Across the studies, we found that participants with more education-linked genetic variants had longer-living parents compared with those with the lowest genetic education scores, those with the highest scores had parents who lived on average 6 months longer. This finding suggests the hypothesis that part of the ultimate explanation for the extended longevity of better-educated people is an underlying, quantifiable, genetic propensity.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 31-10-2017
DOI: 10.1038/MP.2017.210
Publisher: MIT Press - Journals
Date: 06-2010
Abstract: Foreign-language learning is a prime ex le of a task that entails perceptual learning. The correct comprehension of foreign-language speech requires the correct recognition of speech sounds. The most difficult speech–sound contrasts for foreign-language learners often are the ones that have multiple phonetic cues, especially if the cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. The present study aimed to determine whether non-native-like cue weighting could be changed by using phonetic training. Before the training, we compared the use of spectral and duration cues of English /i/ and /I/ vowels (e.g., beat vs. bit) between native Finnish and English speakers. In Finnish, duration is used phonologically to separate short and long phonemes, and therefore Finns were expected to weight duration cues more than native English speakers. The cross-linguistic differences and training effects were investigated with behavioral and electrophysiological methods, in particular by measuring the MMN brain response that has been used to probe long-term memory representations for speech sounds. The behavioral results suggested that before the training, the Finns indeed relied more on duration in vowel recognition than the native English speakers did. After the training, however, the Finns were able to use the spectral cues of the vowels more reliably than before. Accordingly, the MMN brain responses revealed that the training had enhanced the Finns' ability to preattentively process the spectral cues of the English vowels. This suggests that as a result of training, plastic changes had occurred in the weighting of phonetic cues at early processing stages in the cortex.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-05-2016
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE17671
No related grants have been discovered for Antti Latvala.